How does one start the process of creating images for a 240 page graphic novel? 
With ideas. Ideas drawn small and quickly to explore the various facets of your storytelling process--- from page layout to panel composition. 
This process is called 'thumbnailing' because the drawings are supposed to be very small.

Lots of comic artists do this in different ways. Some people will draw on their actual script with a thumbnail page layout in the margins. Some people draw on post it notes. I drew my thumbnails digitally which was really easy and had some benefits.

One of the benefits was that I could create a template for the size of the page, then copy and paste that on an entire sheet so I could see the flow of several pages at once.
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Working digitally made it easier to adjust panels and layouts by using the transform tool. If I drew something too small or too big, I could easily make an adjustment to the size of it. If I needed to copy a panel and duplicate it to keep a sequential movement consistent, I could easily copy and paste it.
One thing I had to keep in mind was that the zoom feature could hinder my process of keeping my drawings rough. I have a tendency to zoom in on an image and get too involved in the nitty gritty details. I solved this problem by keeping my dpi to 100 pixels per inch instead of 300 dpi. The low resolution of the image would prevent me from working too detailed because the more I zoomed into the document, the more pixelated it would become. This forced me to work large and rough.

Churning out 240 pages of thumbnails in a short period of time is tough. I am poor at time management skills but am actively working on improving. I can proudly say that I am better at it than I was years ago, but I'm always trying to get better at it.

I realized that I needed to gamify the process for me to make it more fun and less "work". I started to time myself to see how long it took me to complete one page of thumbnails. After doing a few in the beginning, I realized it took me around 10 minutes to complete a page. My goal was to get faster at completing them, so I started writing the start time and stop time for each page. 

Depending on the complexity of the page, some layouts would take longer than others. But at least I was documenting information that helped me to realize how many pages I needed to complete per day in order to meet my deadline.

Seeing the numbers really helped me to visualize the abstract concept of time.

Also, my thumbnails started out REALLY super tight in the beginning. I was still getting accustomed to drawing these characters that I had designed and their shapes weren't yet ingrained in my brain. A few days into the process, I was able to rough them in pretty quickly, but they also started to look like blobs. In the end, I just needed to figure out the 'camera angles' of each shot (storyboard lingo) or the point of view for each panel composition.

When I was done, I sent these to my editor and art director, along with the manuscript, and prayed that they were able to figure out what I drew!

The feedback I get from family helps me to refine the characters even further. Keith and I both liked the girl on the top right the most, but both of my daughters thought her hair was too boring and plain. I did variations on the bottom and then got even more feedback to combine the bangs from one design and the ponytail from another.  Voila! I have a character that everyone in my family likes and everyone has had some sort of say in its creation. *I also thought if I could design a younger Tahani from our favorite show "The Good Place," she'd be pretty cute.*

For the next character, the inspiration came from a viral video of a high school percussionist...

I loved this kid so much! When I saw him, I knew I wanted my character to resemble him. 

After exploring the shapes with 12 characters I showed them to Keith, who already had a very distinct idea in his own mind of what this kid should look like. (Do you think a bowl cut hairdo will still exist in the 24th Century? Maybe.)

I usually work in my art studio, print out the character sheet when I'm done, walk into the kitchen and show my husband. If he reacts emotionally with happiness or excitement, then I know I've found my character.

Am I the only one who goes into designing characters with a distinct person in mind? Maybe. Sometimes I draw people that end up looking like someone I know inadvertently. Once I realize it, I usually go all in and make the character intentionally look like the person. It's fun to say, "Hey, Kevin! I put you in my illustration in Highlights Magazine!"
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Keith and I began writing our graphic novel without having the answer to a very important question. That question was:

How do you format a manuscript for a graphic novel?

We had no clue. We knew that there would be panels. We knew that there would be pages. But we didn't know how to break all of that up into a functional manuscript that would tell us how many panels per page and thus, how many pages of the graphic novel we'd have.

As a writer with no former background in comic books, and as an illustrator with no former experience in writing a graphic novel manuscript, we first approached it in an odd way. I figured, the least he could do is panel the dialog out with one or two characters talking, three at most. He also formatted the original manuscript in scrivener (not the best idea). We assumed that roughly a page of the manuscript would equal a page of a graphic novel, but we didn't know how the math worked out or why it worked out that way. 
In the end, we were given a sample page from our editor that looked something like this:






Each page is labeled with the page number at the top.
Each panel is labeled with the description at the top in bold.
Character names are all caps. Each dialog text has a number before the name so at the end you'll know how many dialog bubbles there should be.
Each page needs to be planned out as to how many panels you want for a particular page. You'll notice that Page 2 has only 6 panels and Page 3 has only 3 panels.
So you're going to have to figure out how many panels you want on each page. 
How do you do that? Well, I had to figure that out while going through the story with Keith. Initially, he only knew where he wanted to section off the panels, but he had no idea how many panels there should be per page.
So, during our edits, we sat next to each other and reviewed the manuscript. I thumbnailed out what I thought each page should look like and he adjusted the manuscript to reflect that.
In the beginning, I was sketching out the art for each page, but then as we got further along, I stopped sketching and just started figuring out how big/small/long/tall the panels would be and what each page might look like. 

It took us about a month of reformatting our script and thumbnailing out the panels. We started the editing session with roughly 280 pages of script. We ended the editing session with 282 graphic novel pages. I don't know how may panels there are in total, but this is what it looked like in a stack. (don't mind my sound effects, I'm just admiring all my hard work!)

Now we wait to hear back from our editor and see how much more we need to cut, thus rendering all my thumbnailing completely null and void. Ha!

Now, starting off, I knew that this particular alien was going to be tall, lean and extremely intelligent. As far as what it would look like, I had no idea. So once I drew these, I was able to start seeing faces and shapes that I could push into a direction and turn into something viable. The video below shows how I created the side and 3/4 turns on the final design I ended up creating.

While working on the front view of the design, I had to be mindful of what the profile and 3/4 view of the character would also look like, which means I had to think in terms of 3 Dimensional form and space. I didn't think the body would protrude as much in the beginning but it started to take on an ant-like type abdomen. Cool! I never would have started out with that idea, but that's where I ended up.
So, one alien race down, and one more to go. 
The next alien race will be the opposite- short, squat, and not so bright. Should be fun!

Have I shared this with you yet? No? Well, the news has been out for months now, and I suppose it's time that I officially post it in my "making a graphic novel" blog.
Oh, has it really been months since I've posted?
Hmm. Imagine that! I started something with excitement and then petered out.
That's not so uncommon with me, unfortunately.
Yes, I started this blog last year with the intention of documenting my process of creating a graphic novel, but I was also finishing up the illustrations for 4 (!!) picture books, and wouldn't you know it, I plum forgot about this blog. 
I mean, I didn't forget about it completely. I knew that it was here, but I also knew that it had to take a back burner to completing my illustrations for the Clyde the Hippo series (the first two books come out April 14th! Have you pre-ordered yours yet?)
So, now that the final art for the last book has been submitted, and I await any revision notes from my designer ("The pedals on all of the bikes are grey except for page 7-8; Please revise.) I can get back to documenting my process of making a very epic graphic novel. 
Also, as it happens, we are currently on our first official day of California Governor Gavin Newsom's order to "shelter in place," but we've technically been sheltering in place for 7 days. So our personal quarantine count is Day 7. 
Day 7 or many, many more days to come.
So, now is THE PERFECT time to get back to this blog.
I've got some concept and development art to share and I even want to share the story of how we sold our graphic novel to our publisher in 5 1/2 months.
It took 6 long years from creation date to sell date for Clyde the Hippo and it took only 5 1//2 months for Blake Laser.
There may have been some luck involved that second time.
Stay tuned.